Autumn garden Fear of mortality is a domino in Before I Leave You, the play with which 72-year-old dramatist Rosanna Yamagiwa Alfaro, who has been flexing her inky fingers in Cambridge for 40 years, enters the big time.

Before and aphra Liz Duffy Adams's dramaturgical homage, Or, , is more florid than floral and sometimes clever bordering on cute. But the play, being given a brisk area premiere by the Lyric Stage Company of Boston (through November 6), is ingenious.

You don't know Jack In the flesh, the thing itself was about as odd and amusing as it had appeared on paper: John Malkovich delivering the "confessions" of convicted Austrian serial killer Jack Unterweger while accompanied onstage by a Baroque orchestra and a couple of sopranos singing arias.